I heard the most delicious lyric the other day and felt compelled to share.

Would the fox be as quick if he hadn’t his hound?

Pretty obvious what the lyricist was saying I feel. So what is your hound? What is constantly nipping at your heels and trying to catch you and essentially kill you?

As I thought about this I realised something scary. I am my own hound. I am the thing nipping at my heels, trying to kill or subdue myself, and constantly at war with myself. Even with all the other stuff in my life that I feel as insurmountable, the only thing standing in my way is me.

I’ve always thought of myself as kind of an asshole, but this is ridiculous. Why don’t I want to see myself succeed? Why don’t I want to see myself happy? Has it just become instinct to be depressed and feel like I have no way out? These are questions for which I sincerely wish I had an answer.

I don’t even know if I care enough to fight for it anymore. Not a desperate plea or declaration of killing myself or anything like that. Just a thought that maybe, just maybe, some people will go through life like this. It’s not to say that I don’t have happy moments, because I do. I have some fantastic moments with my family, especially with my niece. I don’t think I could give that up for anything.

But in those moments when my family is gone and my friends are busy, I am alone with myself. And when I’m with myself, all I do is think, “why am I alone?”. I apologise for coming off as emo and whatever other pejorative you can think of to describe someone express an honest feeling, but it’s how I feel.